Life Line
by Niry
Summary: She is too weak, too selfish. Haruka makes a decision. One-sided Haruka/Mamoru.


**Author Note:** I'm not really a writer. The most I can produce are short scenes as they occur to me, so there will be no addition to this fic. This is not the first thing I've ever written, but it is the first published. Please drop me a line about it if you like. Thank you for reading!

The time line of this fic is very vague, but I would say it occurs around Haruka's later teens (17 or later).

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Until Death Do Us Part or its characters. If I did, I probably wouldn't like it as much. :P (Pfft, like is a severe understatement, along the line of, "The sun is kind of warm.")

**Life Line**

She wanted to howl. She wanted to rage. She wanted to scream her very being into the sky. She wanted to do everything and anything that would help her believe that she was not the helpless, useless little girl that she was. Her soul shaken to the core, it was all she could do to stop from touching him to make sure that he was still here with her. She did not dare even to just grip his sleeve, afraid that it would somehow exacerbate his wounds. His strong, resilient body, trained and honed to an edge, was now battered almost beyond recognition. He had never been so very close to crossing the line between life and death before. Her fault, all her fault. Her hands shook as they clutch at the bed sheet near his slack hand, broken and bandaged. He laid so still and quiet in the sterile room that, were it not for the desperately reassuring beeping of the machine that measured his slow heartbeats, she would have thought he was... No! Never! He would never... could never be...

She bit her lip so hard it went numb, and she thought she tasted blood, but it could never measure to his pain. She pressed her face into the mattress, suppressing her sobs and tears, dragging ragged breaths through her mouth. Her fault, all her fault. If he... if he died, she would kill herself first. She was a selfish brat. He knew it. He could see through her soul. He knew her in and out, perhaps even all her feelings for him. If she was the angel she should be, she would never have called out to him on that first day (her fault, all her damned fault!). But she had wanted to live. It was an instinct deeply seated in her bones. Most of all, she wanted, needed to meet this man that she had only seen in dreams for all her life. Her ferocious fighter, her bloody protector. He turned out to be beyond any preconception she had of him. He was aggressive in his violence, yet tightly reined under iron hard control, perfectly embodied in his sword. He seemed cold and uncaring, gruff and laconic, but underneath it all was a core of unwavering justice, an unmovable determination, and most illusive of all, a trace of affection for all those under his protection.

She knew she wasn't his reason for fighting. She knew she was only a convenient opportunity dropped in his lap in his perpetual quest to hone his skills. At least, that was how it was at first. As time passed, they grew closer, their fates so intertwined she couldn't see how they could ever part. Whether he acknowledged it or not, she knew he cared for her as a ward, as a team mate, and possibly as a friend. She would always hope for more, but it was not yet time. She didn't want to manipulate his feelings for her with her accursed ability. The vision of their wedding still haunted her, less often now than before. How she wished for it, but her hopes and dreams had dwindled. She wanted only to be by his side, in whatever capacity she might serve.

Yet things had come to this point, all because she was too weak, too selfish. He should not have been the one to leave, like he had once before, like she knew that he was still planning to. No, she should be the one to go, to stop causing him very serious danger to his life. He wasn't the one who brought hurt to her; it was the opposite. He brought her a depth of emotions she never would have had, not with anyone else. Pain, affection, worry, desire, she would not give them up for anything. But she would give him up, if it would save him. She could be strong enough. He had taught her to be strong enough to survive on her own. Life had thrown them together, but she could make her own destiny.

But for now, for this moment she would be weak. She would cling to his presence, to assure herself that he was not gone. He was still hers. She placed a feather-light kiss on his hand, and pressed her cheek as close to him as she dared on the mattress. In the dawning hours, she would kiss his forehead, and allow herself one greedy, most fleeting touch of her lips on his, and she would go. Closing her eyes now, she listened to his life beats, and filled herself with him, her life line.


End file.
